to be irritated by these school trip arrangements?

[ILookedintheWater]

6th Form English Lit trip to London to the theatre.

We are instructed that kids will be met at railway station 45 minutes from the school, cross country, at 11am, and returned there at 7 tonight.
At this point I'll explain we are rural: no stations within 10 minutes walk or anything, but are in an area where there are several lines to choose from: this station is closer to London but only £2 cheaper than a local station which is much easier to get to.
They are 6th formers so can't be ferried everywhere and DH and I need to work so I took DC to the closest station (not the cheapest to London so wouldn't have been picked but it is on the same line as the station the school are using). My DC gets train to meeting place and has a (very) leisurely breakfast as they have a couple of hours in hand. Then the teacher (with the tickets) is late and can't park so they miss the train (and the next one) anyway.
I would rather have paid £3 extra and taken DC to more convenient station, or paid £5 extra and had everyone travel from school together in a minibus, or made our own plan and DC met them at the theatre. The amount it cost to get to the further station has more than offset the miniscule saving on fare, and because they are late (as hardly any parking at chosen station) they will either miss the beginning or miss lunch. I'm not fuming, I do understand the amount of planning and the responsibility taken on to even offer a trip, but IABU to be a bit eye-rolly over the whole logistics plan?

Emmy a coach can add £30 to the price... honest!

I know it seems bizarre that students can't be met at location but these days a raft of trip documentation means they really can't.

At my school, officially, we are meant to always meet at school and then walk in a crocodile to the station 30 mins walk away. We don't as a rule but we do meet at the station, never in London.

To give an example , we run a trip to MK, 15 mins drive away. Sixth formers who can drive are not allowed to drive and meet us there, and students who actually live in MK need special parental permission all signed off to meet us there!

It is to over protect your children....

Also, sixth formers are notoriously unreliable!

We ran a trip 9to London) recently, meeting at our station. three just didn't bother to turn up.

Imagine the stress of that if you were waiting in London for them...

Playonwurtz unfortunately schools don't work like that. My kids as 6th formers were very public transport competent and would go in and out of the city in the evenings with friends. However if a school event they still had to be dispatched to the care of a grown at 18! Annoying but the school clearly couldn't really run different policies for different kids so we accepted it.

I got there just as the coach was disappearing - leaving then 13yo DD1 (only local one on that trip) on her own in a deserted car park in the dark...and apparently when they got back to the school they left a few children outside the school waiting for their parents -so not like they couldn't have waited a few minutes for me to get there...

Have I understood this right? The coach dropped your child off en route back to school, so you could collect her locally rather than drive back to the school? And the coach was early?

There's the problem right there. You say the coach should pick up/drop off locally rather than only picking up from school. But the school is responsible for the child until back at school, so when the coach is early or the parent is late, it causes problems.

My DCs go to school 13 miles away. School trips quite often go right past the end of our road. But the only place we can drop off/pick up is at school. And I completely understand why.

Yes that's right budgie - I wasn't overly impressed...DD had phoned me when she got out the theatre -when she realised it was early - and I was on my way and the teachers did know that - but still I could have broken down... and they left other children outside the school (in an area that can be quite 'lively' at night) waiting for their parents to get them. If the parents were late etc it is one thing but when they are 40 mins early cos they have got the finish time wrong... (but actually that was not the usual department ...and that department were disorganised in other ways too.)
I don't know about your situation - whether it your catchment school or not and how many children live in your area and what the roads are like. But it makes sense to have a pick up point if they are coming this way -especially as 40% of the children live in this direction.
(Actually they had a whole year school trip thing in first year and the coaches dropped off there for our area...and others went in the opposite direction.)
And thinking about it more - the playgroup DD2 went to used to do a summer trip on a coach (around 30 children) and had several pick up points on the way through the village...you chose your pickup stop in advance and they ticked the children off their list as they picked up. Then they dropped off at the same place and ticked them off....(it was part of making it more of an 'adventure' ... obviously frequent stops would make the journey take much longer - I'm not suggesting that for high school trips.) But the organisers must have a check list of children (or they might lose them in or leave them at the theatre etc) and these are children old enough to know where they are supposed to get off etc -it is just a tick on a list. Not overly complicated, well able to be part of a risk assessment etc. Not a big deal.

What I have just realised from this thread -that is an eye opener for me - is that people just don't consider the environmental impact of unnecessary car journeys. I didn't mentioned explicitly because it is is something I just automatically consider -try to organise lift shares, try to do several things in one area at the same time etc...
(And I do make life complicated for myself - it is like I recently witnessed someone blithely chucking something largish and metal into a landfill bin and I was horrified - itching to get it out and put it in my recycling pile...then realised that might be why they have an immaculate uncluttered house and I am drowning in crap..)

unlucky did you seriously expect the coach to sit and wait for you? Not only have you inconvenienced everyone else by demanding that journey DC is dropped off somewhere specific, but then you expect everybody else to wait for you to turn up? Entitled much?

FWIW, I would be willing to bet that the school had to pay extra for an extra drop off - I know that would be the case for me.

Teachers always wait until the last child is picked up. I've stood around in the evening at school until gone 11 on more than one occasion.

You attitude to this stinks. I feel sorry for your DD's teachers. If you don't like the arrangements offered, then perhaps don't send her.

You are so wrong....
For a start ...yes they should wait for me - if they give parents the completely wrong finish time and they are more than 30 min early ....(on previous occasions I was 10-15min early to be on the safe side - even though I told DD to phone me as soon as they got out of the theatre.)
And as I said they didn't wait with the children outside the school.... didn't wait until the last child was picked up (and I was shocked by that but then they were teens...). So waiting a couple of minutes for me would just have meant that those children weren't hanging around on the street unaccompanied as long.
And as I also said that is the only time that DD was the only child getting off there...the trips organised by another dept had more local children and it made a lot of sense .. if I had known it was only DD I wouldn't have asked them to drop her off there - but like I said that department was chronically disorganised.
And no the coach wouldn't charge more - you are obviously using the wrong companies if they are going to charge you extra to stop at basically a bus stop on their way past...it would add max 2 mins to the total journey - no extra driver wages and use a few pence more fuel... (And in the case I am talking the driver would be working less hours -finishing early but quite rightly they wouldn't have charged the school less for that ...in fact they were lucky that the coach must have waited near the venue and didn't have another job on -or they would have been hanging around there for their coach... )
Yes I do book coaches for a group -in fact a couple of groups- and on the whole use the same company that DD's school mainly use ...they are actually really local to us -in fact if it wasn't for child protection issues (protection for the coach drivers) they could actually drop off more or less on my doorstep taking the coach back to the depot....but actually even the less local company I use sometimes wouldn't charge extra for that....
And I have been involved with risk assessments and organising trips for groups of children ....
And I have also been involved with taking (primary age) children on school and other trips - both as part of a previous job and as a parent volunteer - I also know quite a few teachers and I do appreciate what they do...
Neither I nor any of the teachers I have worked with would have a problem with that drop off. (And I would never have left those young teens either -but that teacher obviously thought it was ok)
I think rather than me not sending DD on trips - teachers who organise them in their own time - and do so so unwillingly - just shouldn't do so...

Very poor form of the teacher to be late.

I wouldn't be happy about that.

Re: drop off point etc, that wouldn't bother me. You can't find one spot that would please everyone

unlucky I organise a lot of trips. Mostly to the theatre. We leave from school and drop off at school. No parent has ever asked for their PFB to be dropped off somewhere else. Occasionally, if we're going to a matinee, parents sign a form to say that their children can stay on in town afterwards as many of them attend a youth theatre that evening and it's not worth their while coming back to school to go straight back but being dropped off nearer home purely for the parents' convenience (which, let's face it, is the only reason you've done this) has never come up.

I think your attitude stinks.

Though Jaques it does depend why the teacher was late.

To have missed more than 1 train sounds like it might have been a real reason (she says. Round here we have trains every 20 mins so 25 mins late could mean missing 2).

If there's an accident or a diversion etc they may well have been held up well beyond what would be a reasonable contingency time. If it's just running late then that's bad form.

And FWIW, i very much enjoy organising trips, but expect a bit of respect from the kids that go and their parents. If a parent did expect an extra drop off purely for their own convenience, I would very politely tell them no.

evil we are never going to agree....
As I said it is a lot more than just 'my convenience' ...to me it doesn't make sense for all those extra car miles/emissions etc (100 miles - if you say 5 children - 5 cars ) when it is a matter of minutes to drop off closer by...
And like I said it is a 30 min plus drive -so say instead of being picked up at 10.30 they get back to the school at 11pm - so our children would be getting home at 11.30pm...
And that isn't taking into account people who can't drive ...
or ones who have younger children and no-one else to look after them -taking them out for 15 mins at 10.30pm is not ideal but possible as a one off - but that's a lot different than for over an hour...especially if they have school next day too...

But if you said no it would be your prerogative....and it might mean my DD couldn't go - for 2 mins and a tick on a sheet...but so be it.

These are sixth formers: why can't they take more responsibility for themselves?

[Outing self...] In my job, I recently hosted a visit for 22 students from yr13. The college decided to expect them to sort their own transport in order to avoid the cost of coach hire. Most had access to cars and the venue is very well served by public transport. It was daytime, mid-week, to a well-known location.

Just 13 of the 22 turned up ... and 8 of them were more than 30mins late! 3 had to be collected from a nearby industrial estate because they got lost... in the age of sat nav, Google maps, etc.

The teens were pathetically helpless. I was appalled. My own younger teens would have done way better.

Don't blame the teachers.

Coaches are very expensive and you need about 45+ pupils to make them a comparable price. I am always amazed at the lack of gratitude from parents for these trips which involve teachers giving up their time, unpaid, to enrich pupils. If you find the trip awkward take your child to the theatre yourself!

But all of the other kids would have texted their parents to say they were getting back early and the teachers wouldn't have known how far away you were from your special pick up point - 2 mins or twenty. You can't really expect a whole coach load to wait and then be later back to school. Also 're the kids being left this is very very unusual. In twenty years I have never been in a trip where one member of staff doesn't wait. Is it possible she / he had popped into the building or to their car or something and you didn't see them? Also in those twenty years I have seen some appalling behaviour from parents at pickups - after one 3 day residential in France, it was pissing down on return so the coach parked up as close as he could to some shelter. The kids piled out and the bags were being unloaded. One parent whose kid's bag came off first went bananas at the teacher in charge because the coach was blocking the exit. Said teacher was standing in the pissing rain still supervising 50 teenagers after 3 days in loco parentis. Not a sniff of a thank you. Absolutely awful.

Sorry OP but YABU - what if half the kids wanted a 'special' drop off closer to home and half of those parents were late?? Then the poor students and teachers would be held up getting back to school, let alone the logistics of trying to keep track of who is going where and when. Surely you can see it's much easier and safer if everyone is dropped off and picked up from the same place??

It's unfortunate the teacher was late but until you know why maybe don't judge quite so harshly! Hopefully they will of got there on time and had an enjoyable worthwhile experience. And if they missed lunch I'm sure at that age they'll survive.........

If it irritates you so much then maybe say no to school trips and just take her to the theatre yourself?

I'm in awe of any teacher who volunteers for school trips - I wouldn't do it! (not a teacher).

Out and about in London I see them organising, cajoling, lining-up, counting them on/off buses, and more alarmingly the tubes, a class full of primary-age kids.

They deserve a medal pinned on their high-viz tabards!

Sure teacher was not intending to be late. I suppose you have never had trouble parking. She or he may well have had to be in school before heading over to station to either teach or sort out cover. I think I would probably be appreciative of her giving up her own time til 7 or possibly 8pm by the time she gets home!

west I love doing trips to London. Quite a coach/train ride from me but usually good fun.
Sometimes I look at groups of 9-14 year olds and things they get the entire group walking, sensible crossing thing a lot more than massive adult tourist groups. Probably because they have nutters like us standing in the road yelling 'stop!' 'Let the car out' 'now go. Quickly. Put your phone away when we're walking!' Last trip I did to London a students said they're buying me a lollipop lady coat.

i think 11 o'clock drop is totally unreasonable. most parents of sixth formers are out at work and if it is that rural they need to try and get to station.
they should meet at school and coach to location, or meet at station before 8 am imo

angry the point was - like for me - it was so much earlier than expected that it was drop everything to get there on time - which is why some parents didn't make it even to the school where they did have more notice at least - can imagine if you were in the bath etc?
I didn't see the left DCs I just know that DD1's friend was one of the ones left waiting (lives a similar distance but in opp direction) and her mum stayed with another child waiting for their parent (as I would have done in the circumstances).
And I wouldn't have complained about a drop off in that direction if they had been going that way ...

(jo I'm not the OP...so don't judge them by my actions...)

west I helped take primary age children on school trips in central London as part of my job many years ago...it was actually ok. It just has to be well organised with enough supervisors - so you don't lose any. And the children wanted to go and knew if they misbehaved they wouldn't be allowed on another similar trip -so even the 'tricky' ones were on their best behaviour.

(Taking them (walking) to a supermarket was much more stressful as they weren't particularly excited by the prospect...)